KARMA V
A further important step in understanding karma is to understand one’s own, personal consciousness— or, more precisely, after all to gradually let go of this understanding and open up further for not knowing. It is somewhat like dancing: first we learn steps and sequences of movement, but sooner or later, we got to forget them, and just dance freely, letting it happen. The magical world and inside in general needs this dancing quality.
We humans are aware of ourselves without reflecting on it. Many scholars claim that this is the difference between humans and animals: that humans can be aware of their own consciousness. The phenomenon of consciousness is described by this term combining knowing and being. We know of our being so to say — consciousness. I know, and therefore I am quite sure, that I — Winfried the Quijote — do exist. That is self-awareness. I imagine I know who I am.
As a side note: It would be a nice alternative to speak not of consciousness, but of “grasp-being,” or “being-touched,” or “being-understood.” I like the word “grasp” in German “begreifen” the most). I’m a fan of that word, since it goes deeper than “knowing.” In begreifen we got this element of greifen which means to grasp. There are people who know a lot, but actually don’t really grasp or understand what they know—not at all, surprisingly enough. My enchanting ancient mother meant this when, in a biting and dismissive tone, she would say of someone, “That is a cynic!” She wasn’t aware of it, but what she meant is someone who knows but does not grasp. Especially in Zen Buddhism—the Buddhist schools from Japan—and Chan Buddhism—the Chinese origins of those Japanese schools—there are many lovely, magical, wonderful practices where masters often desperately try to lead their students from knowing to not even grasping. That’s what Zen Buddhism is often all about, and I find this extremely important and especially helpful and healing. I myself, in my eventful life, have had contact with representatives of all sorts of religious—mostly Buddhist—schools from many different traditions worldwide. That was partly due to my job as secretary to Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. As secretary, I was often politically active, and in this process, I often became very close to people and could sense them somewhat deeper. In any case, this issue of knowing vs. grasping exists everywhere—of course, also in art. Especially, very knowledgeable experts of Buddhism often grasp and hold more strongly than uneducated Buddhists who simply study, meditate, and celebrate out of happiness and love. In short, cleverness, intelligence, and too much knowledge usually hinder insight and liberation in the Buddhist sense. A classic example is the life story of the Indian yogi Naropa—a great story! Phew! So that was a long long side note!
Anyway, back: The self-awareness—I am me.
People love to discuss whether rebirth exists—reincarnation—and often don’t even ask what, of themselves, could actually be reborn. They imagine themselves with a “phantom body” that looks and feels just like their current body, wandering through afterlife realms like heaven or hell etc.. We also picture ourselves that way in dreams. The physical body quickly decays, rots, or is burned after death. So the body-body is gone. And we know that many types of consciousness do not work so well without a body, for example sense consciousness—seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, pain-awareness, etc. But wait! In dreams, don’t we also have sight-awareness, touch-awareness, pain-awareness? Well, for sure we do carry memories of those sensations.
This and similar avenues—pondering and sensing, asking oneself what it was like in dreams, etc.—are great exercises. Very important! (Imagine a bold guru in white clothes,one finger raised, saying: Very important!)
And with that, we come to memory-consciousness. Nowadays, that kind of consciousness is especially intriguing, since we encounter dementia and Alzheimer’s so often. People didn’t used to live as long, so I suspect Alzheimer’s wasn’t as prevalent then as it is now. Probably, Alzheimer was simply considered dementia a hundred years ago. That raises the question: Could memory also be associated with bodily modes of consciousness? I suspect—yes—a lot of memories really do have more to do with bodily consciousness (i.e. the operations in the brain, the medulla oblongata, and spine) but there might also be memories that belong solely to the “I know who I am!”—consciousness.
That could mean that, at the time of bodily death, self-awareness continues along with certain fields of memory. We know this from sleep and dreams, from anesthesia and meditation.
I by no means want to take away the joy of discussing afterlife experiences with family and friends. Go ahead! Even if it seems to be superficial chatter. I think people don’t spend nearly enough time right now on these kinds of discussions or chatter. And don’t even for a second think only experts should have those talks and thoughts. On the contrary! For me—as an expert—it’s a great and genuine pleasure and enrichment to join these discussions and just listen. Innocence often reveals far more than experience and expertise. I’ve taught religion to school children quite often, and I’ve probably learned more from them than anyone ever learned from me.
For example:
There’s an early translation of the so-called Tibetan Book of the Death by Mr. W.Y. Evans-Wentz. Mr. Evans-Wentz himself knew no Tibetan. He was an Indologist, coming from a Hindu tradition to which he was honestly and deeply connected. He was a thorough Hindu, though he was not always aware of how fundamentally Hinduism differs from Buddhism. Unsurprising, since Hindus share lots of goddesses, protectors, and philosophical concepts with Buddhists—karma, dharma, shunyata etc. etc. But Evans-Wentz’s admiration for the text “Bardo Thödol”—the famous best-seller “The Tibetan Book of the Death” is based on it— and it was noble and sincere. He became friends with a Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lama Kazi Dawa Sandup, who showed him his translation of that text. So Mr. Evans-Wentz thought, “That’s an amazing text that must be made accessible to the public. But the monk’s English is not all that good and precise, and he doesn’t really grasp the terminology of psychology and esotericism, so I need to somewhat revise his translation.” The translation struck him as imprecise. Thus, the first edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead was born. Evans-Wentz was probably a really nice, open person, and meant only the best for readers and seekers everywhere. He was not aware of how much his version of the Tibetan Book of the Death was influenced by his own hinduist background. Later, Lama Govinda, a Buddhist scholar living high in the Himalayas in Almora with his wife Li Gotami, became aware of this (I got to meet them both later. Very warm and loveable people, though a bit like from another planet?). Evans-Wentz agreed that Lama Govinda should just translate the whole text anew. But the publishers didn’t go along with that. The text—Bardo Thödol, “The Tibetan Book of the Death”—was already a huge bestseller worldwide, and publishers didn’t want to disrupt that stream of excitement or flow of commercial success. So Lama Govinda was only allowed to add footnotes to the already successful translation. But this led to 400 footnotes! That was funny, and silly on one hand, but you could as well consider it as a signe for aiming at thoroughness and scholarship. And then on top of it the super-famous psychologist C.G. Jung was asked to write a foreword (which, with all due respect to Jung, was absolutely off-base and misplaced) and a gorgeous, dark-blue bound book was released: “The Tibetan Book of the Death.” A further bestseller was born. By the way just this year a new edition came out, although everyone should know by now that another reprint is utter nonsense. Anyway in the seventies I carried this hefty tome all across Asia as a pilgrim, learned a lot from it, and only when I was half-dead from pneumonia, lacking the strength to carry such heavy books anymore, did I leave it behind, high in the Himalayas in the Kulu Valley (meeting place of gods, spirits, dakinis [female angels], wermas [warrior protectors, like the armored Michael], dralas [male protectors], and oracles) in my near-death retreat—a huge wooden cabin, wild-west style. That’s where I had to leave the book. Well, sorry I got lost, I am really rambling around in the past?! Sorry but I am known for that. Pease just try to enjoy yourself with it. By the way—since I’m already rambling—based on that translation of the Tibetan Book of the Death, the “godfather” of LSD-induced consciousness expansion in the seventies—Harvard professor of psychology Timothy Leary—wrote The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Death. That’s how it goes: half-truths get commented on, the comments get commented on, and what the original text was all about might even get completely lost. On the other hand, you could also say positively, that a misunderstood translation of a classic Tibetan text created huge waves in the worlds of psychology, esotericism, philosophy, art, and spiritual inquiry. Without all that triggered by this one single book, there might not be such rich deep Tibetan studies all over the world, and so many great translations from Tibetan texts and the funding for them!
But what exactly is the difference between Hindu and Buddhist perspectives? The problem is the “Self” (Sanskrit: atman). We Buddhists see this self, this “I”—the whole self-awareness of Winfried the Quijote with all its bells and whistles—as illusory. Beautiful, but ultimately a deception. Phew! I am gone, vanished, dissolved. A stable self, as in Hinduism, or the soul as for Christians—we Buddhists see as a delusion. What gives this illusion stability is habit, speed and fear to get lost. I refer here to my remarks in Karma IV. The funny thing is, the very text on which the Tibetan Book of the Death is based deals precisely with that. That’s “irony of fate” in action.
This illusion of a concrete, solid self usually persists past death. The illusion of ego-consciousness and certain types of memory-consciousness continue after death. Habit and speed often go right on past death. But again: The nature of every kind of consciousness is empty and without substance (see Karma IV).
This part of memory-consciousness that stays connected beyond death is directly linked to universal, all-encompassing memory-consciousness. There is a connection to all memories that exist at all. Already, anyone could theoretically access all memories of all worlds. Maybe I’ll come back to that another time?
That’s enough for today.
Yours, Winfried the Quijote
